THE COLLEGES OF THE SMELTER TRUST
The interlocking directorate of Colorado maintains also a state
university at Boulder, on the Colorado and Southern Railroad; which road
has a trustee of Williams College for president, and a General
Theological Seminary trustee for director. The standards of academic
freedom prevailing at the University of Colorado are very interestingly
revealed in a case which occurred seven years ago.
During the coal strike of 1914, the operators and their militia set
aside the constitution of the United States in the Southern counties of
the state, and one professor at the law school took a stand against
their action. The operators had burned and suffocated three women and
eleven children at Ludlow, and Professor James W. Brewster accepted the
chairmanship of a public committee to investigate the strike situation.
In peril, not merely of his job, but of his life, he spent several weeks
in the coal fields, questioning witnesses and bringing out evidence. He
was the means of forcing an investigation by Congress, and he appeared
and testified before the Congressional Committee. His subsequent
dismissal from the university was investigated by the American
Association of University Professors, and their report lies before me. I
will state briefly the facts admitted, and the contentions of both
parties to the dispute, and leave it for the reader to form his own
conclusions.
Professor Brewster was nearly fifty-nine years of age, and the president
of the university claims that on this account his appointment to the
university had been merely temporary, and that this was fully made clear
to Professor Brewster. Professor Brewster denies that he had any such
understanding. It was admitted by both the president and the dean of the
law school that Brewster’s teaching was “entirely satisfactory.” Says
the report:
The testimony of students in his law classes is that Professor
Brewster in the class room adhered strictly to the subjects he was
teaching and made no allusions whatever to industrial questions. The
courses that he was teaching did not in any way involve the issues
that were then agitating Colorado. Immediately after Professor
Brewster’s testifying in December he was abusively attacked by several
Colorado newspapers in unrestrained language and with the most
unreasonable distortion and exaggeration of the tenor of his
testimony. According to the testimony of President Farrand, E. M.
Ammons, then Governor of Colorado, called up President Farrand by
telephone soon after Mr. Brewster’s appearance before the Commission
in Denver, and urged the immediate dismissal of Professor Brewster
because of his testimony.
The president of the university asserts that he refused the governor’s
request. That was in December, 1914; in May, 1915, Professor Brewster
was invited to come to Washington, to give his testimony before the
United States Commission on Industrial Relations. Professor Brewster
went to the president of the university, and stated that he had been
able to arrange for a colleague to take his classes for the few days of
his absence. As to what happened next there is a disagreement. Professor
Brewster claims that the president told him that if he went to
Washington his connection with the university must cease at once. The
president, in his statement to the committee of the association, gives
his version of the interview as follows:
I told him that I regarded the publicity which had attended his former
testimony as detrimental in its effect upon the university. In the
inflamed condition of public sentiment in Colorado at that time it was
exploited in a way which I regarded as unfortunate. His connection
with the university was made prominent in the inaccurate publicity
which resulted and the institution was drawn thereby into a
controversy, and an attitude attributed to the university as an
institution, which I regarded as unwarranted and unfortunate. In
further discussion of this point and in illustrating the prejudice
aroused by the testimony, I cited the feeling expressed by members of
the Legislature and reported to me during the legislative session of
1915. I used some expression to the effect that his public statements
regarding the industrial situation had been an obstacle in the
university’s effort to obtain additional support from the Legislature.
I did not, as I recall it, lay any stress upon this and mentioned it
incidentally as an illustration and matter of interest at the moment.
I stated that in view of the inaccurate publicity and the involvement
of the university at the time of his previous appearance before the
Federal Commission, I thought it would be desirable, in case he
decided to go to Washington, that a statement should be issued
indicating the temporary nature of his connection with the university
and that that connection would naturally terminate at the end of the
academic year.
The outcome of the matter was that Professor Brewster decided not to go
to Washington; nevertheless, he was dropped from the University of
Colorado. It is interesting to note that among those who were retained
at the University was Dr. John Chase, who will live in American history
as the man responsible for the Ludlow massacre. He was adjutant-general
of the Colorado militia at the time, and an unscrupulous partisan of the
coal operators. Among the regents at the time was Mr. C. C. Parks,
politician, banker, coal company director, and furious opponent of the
strikers. Among the law faculty who fought Professor Brewster was
Professor A. A. Reed, whose law partner was engaged in prosecuting a
number of the former strikers. Professor Reed, a former bank president,
was at this time an official of a national bank in Denver, and a
director of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, Mr. Rockefeller’s concern
which put through the Ludlow massacre. I am interested to note that
another member of the faculty who is not objected to is Professor L. W.
Cole, director of the School of Social Service, who last summer
recommended to the students of his summer school Vice-President
Coolidge’s magazine articles on the “Red menace,” a farrago of
foolishness gathered by the Lusk committee and their secret agents.
Also we ought to have a glance at Colorado College, located at Colorado
Springs; a co-educational institution started by the Congregational
Church, and now conducted by the interlocking directorate. They had a
first-class business man for president, but there were brought against
him “serious charges of indiscreet and improper conduct toward two women
employed in the college offices.” Now, of course, the business men who
run the government of Colorado, in conjunction with the brothels and
wine-rooms, understand that college presidents have to have their little
pleasures in off hours; but some of the faculty thought that college
presidents ought to have these pleasures somewhere off the campus. They
endeavored privately to force the resignation of the president; whereat
the trustees became furious, and fired a dean who had been active in the
matter. When the students organized and protested, they contemptuously
rejected the students’ demands.
This matter likewise was investigated by the American Association of
University Professors, and it happened that I studied their report
before I knew anything about the trustees and their financial position.
It was rather funny; I read what the trustees said to the professors,
and how they behaved in the various conferences; I read their letters,
and found myself thinking: this must be a rich man, and so must this;
here must be the grand duke, the fellow who runs the place! Then I
looked them up in “Who’s Who,” and, sure enough, there they were—Mr.
Philip B. Stewart, mining and public utility magnate, an active
Republican politician; and Mr. Irving Howbert, president of a bank, a
gold mining company and a railroad, also an active Republican
politician!
Would you like to hear one of these grand dukes addressing his college
professors, gathered together to be taught their place? Listen to the
affidavit of Professor George M. Howe:
The meeting was opened by Mr. P. B. Stewart, chairman of the executive
committee of the Board. Mr. Stewart berated us soundly for what we had
done.... His mains points were that we had been guilty of sending
libelous matter through the mail, for which we might well be sent to
the penitentiary; that we had given the slanderous charges against Dr.
Slocum into the hands of persons who should know nothing of them,
since our letters would come into the hands of private secretaries of
the men to whom they were sent; and that we had made the completion of
the five hundred thousand dollar fund for the College impossible,
since the Trustees, who were large contributors, would now withhold
their subscriptions. His purpose was apparently to make us feel that
our conduct had been thoroughly idiotic and ill-advised in every
respect.
And then hear the summing up of the American Association of University
Professors:
“The committee feels constrained to remark, further, that the attitude
of the majority of the members of the Board of Trustees and of the Board
as a body towards the faculty has been characterized by grave
discourtesy, a lack of openness and candor, and an habitual disregard of
the fact that the administrative officers and teaching staff of a
college have large and definite moral responsibilities in relation to
the internal conditions and standards of the institution with which they
are connected.”
The outcome of the whole matter was that the graduating class of the
college fell off from eighty to twenty-six; but the interlocking
trustees waited. They held the purse-strings, and they knew that the
incident would be forgotten, and the students would come back—which they
did.
Also the plutocracy of Colorado maintains an institution for training
its engineers and mining experts; this is the Colorado School of Mines,
located at Golden. Here also there was trouble, because on “Senior Day”
some of the students got drunk and beat up a member of the faculty at a
baseball game. Naturally, the president and the faculty resented this,
and they suspended five of the students, and there was a great uproar,
culminating in a student strike. This incident also was investigated by
the Association of University Professors, and I studied the report
before I knew anything about the various trustees. Here again I was able
to pick out the grand duke by his bad manners, and by the way everybody
cringed before him when he came down from Cripple Creek to deal with the
row. He is Mr. A. E. Carlton, president of four banks and of several
mining companies.
Naturally, so great a man realized the absurdity of suspending the sons
of the plutocracy, merely for the beating up of a college professor!
With the help of Captain Smith, another member of the board, he settled
the strike by reinstating the suspended students and forcing the
resignation of the protesting president. The board put in a former
president of the college, who had been dismissed for cause, but who was
exactly the sort of fellow they wanted, as you can see from the sworn
testimony of seven different professors, to the effect that he had
lowered the teaching standards of the college by insisting again and
again that the sons of the plutocracy should be given passing marks
after they had failed. The committee of university professors states
that “Professor H. B. Patton, for twenty-four years a member of the
faculty, informed the Committee that President Alderson condoned
cheating on the part of a son of an influential Denver citizen.” Says
Professor Albert G. Wolf: “Many students at the school during Alderson’s
administration were allowed to pass, after having failed in their
studies, because they were either athletes or relations of influential
men of Colorado.” Says Professor Stephen Worrell: “President Alderson
arbitrarily raised the grades of some of the men I had either
conditioned or failed.... Subsequent investigation revealed that the men
whose grades had been raised were relatives of prominent politicians in
the State. I found on inquiry that the same thing had happened to other
members of the faculty, but that they had all accepted the situation as
inevitable.”
This controversy was settled by the dismissal of several of the
protesting professors, and by the appointment of a committee of the
state legislature, which investigated the situation and reported in the
following apposite words:
In conclusion, your Committee finds that the management and
administration of the School of Mines is efficient, the trustees,
officers, and faculty competent, well qualified, and trustworthy, and
that the institution, members, officers, faculty, and trustees are
entitled to the support, respect, and encouragement of the citizens of
this State, the alumni of the institution, and the general public.
Your Committee is of the opinion that the institution will flourish
and its excellent reputation be maintained if it receives the
encouragement and patronage to which it is so justly entitled.